Various devices are known for holding a plurality of containers together. In general, the containers should be held tightly together whilst not being allowed to come into actual contact. In one instance, a bottle combining unit holding four or six bottles of beer in a firm state has been made using cardboard overwraps. In another instance (see for example U.S. Pat. No. 3,733,100), unorientated plastics sheet material has had circular openings punched into it for receiving and gripping beer cans; the openings' margins lip up with localised stretching thereof.
U.K. Pat. No. 982 036 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,386,876 do not relate to holding containers together, but disclose a uniaxially and biaxially orientated mesh structures. Although the openings in the biaxially orientated structure are roughly square, the openings in the uniaxially orientated structure are oblong and too long conveniently to hold the normal circular section bottles or cans.
The verb "orientate" as used herein means "molecularly orientate" and derived words such as "unorientated" and "orientated" have equivalent meanings.